Hello to all synth-geeks!

After looking into Z3ta+2 and u-he's Zebra2, it's finally dawned on me that these are wavetable/waveshaping synths.

They don't generate waveforms with a DSP algorithm. If I'm wrong, please inform me at this point.

Yes, I'm somewhat a "purist" when it comes to how oscillators work.

I see folders of waveforms in each synth. Reading about Massive and Absynth, they seem no different. ROMplers, but not quite?

I'm looking for synths along the lines of Sylenth1, DCAM Synth Squad, Vanguard [weak/cheesy, I know]. I've seen Synthmaster does both DSP and wavetable synthesis. Are there more DSP/non-wavetable synths like these? Or is wavetable sort of a standard that is CPU-friendly and preferred by synth programmers?


The other big names that come to mind are Arturia and GeForce, but not sure how they operate.

Check out the A|A|S synths. I use Ultra Anaolog and Chromaphone the most. Their synths are "physical modellers" and not one sample was harmed in their production. Chromophone is more of a percussion synth but Ultra Analog is a great sounding analog modeller.

I also use a Fabfilter synth called Twin which comes with oscilators, not samples. They also have a very cheap (I think I got it free with their Timeless plugin) synth called One (has just one osciliator).

I've had Absynth since V3 and I always upgrade. Yes, it can use waves, but it also has oscilators and you can do some great stuff with Absynth.

This may be naive, but aren't all software synthesizers wavetable-based? It would be horribly inefficient and totally unnecessary to calculate values for a repeating pattern of numbers. Reading pre-calculated values from a table is standard practice for any other kind of programming.

I believe the OP means that Wavetable synths tend (or are perceived) to sound a bit "static" compared to synths that actually "synthesize" their waveforms in realtime.

bitflipper


This may be naive, but aren't all software synthesizers wavetable-based?

If I'm not mistaken, Zebra oscillators use additive synthesis to construct the waveforms.  If you look at the wave transformation options, several of them could only be accomplished by tweaking individual partials.
 
And then of course there are the synths that state up front that they are additive instruments: Alchemy, Harmor and several others.

I'm aware of how Zebra is advertised to work, but I believe if you could look at the code you'd see that it's reading those partials from indexed tables in memory. Additive, subtractive or FM, they all start with predefined "oscillators" that are a sequence of values in a table, even if it's a synth that lets you draw your own waveforms. I'm not a synth programmer, but I'd be very surprised if there are any soft synths that actually create their waveforms sample-by-sample in real time. (Although I suppose that could account for the horrible CPU consumption of Diva! J/K.)

bitflipper

I'm not a synth programmer, but I'd be very surprised if there are any soft synths that actually create their waveforms sample-by-sample in real time. 

Interestingly, NI's Reaktor includes "parabola" oscillators in addition to sine waves, because, according to the documentation:

The Parabol Module is an oscillator with a parabolic waveform, as shown on the Structure icon of the Module. The waveform consists of two parabolas that meet at zero level. The Parabol Module features logarithmic pitch control at the "P" (pitch) input port and linear amplitude modulation at the "A" input port.

Application

The parabolic waveform sounds like a sine wave with some added odd numbered overtones at very low level. In many cases the parabolic waveform can be used as replacement for a sine generator with less computational load.

and:

If the sine tone does not need to be completely pure, the parabolic oscillator makes a good replacement with less computational load.

This seems to imply that they aren't just sample-waveforms/wavetables.

There is no limit to the potential complexity of a wavetable. The idea is that you calculate the waveform once and then repeat it 100,000 times. You don't recalculate it for every cycle.

On my humble opinion, Z3ta classic comes pretty darn close to analog although it's wave based so I would think Z3ta 2 should come just as close.

I think Psyn II comes with almost every cakewalk product(though I could be wrong), that there is a true synth, you can tweak oscillators till the cows come home, route LFO's,set envelopes to get as good as any sound you could think of and then some.

bitflipper


This may be naive, but aren't all software synthesizers wavetable-based? 

Hi Dave,


In a word, no. I would have thought that at least the so called "physical modelling" synthesizers actually create the different basic waveforms. And even the likes of Absynth, which allows you to use a simple sine, saw, triangle or square wave as the basis of a sound actually has algorythms, or whatever, that creates those waves via calculations. I would be disappointed to learn otherwise, I think.


Thinking about it, it would be great to hear from someone who actually creates these things and tell us for sure what goes on with all those zeros and ones


Another couple of good "virtual analogue" synths I have are in the Korg Legacy suite.